Streusel Topped Lemon Blueberry Muffins

These are my absolutely favorite kind of muffins that I love enjoying for breakfast on the weekends. With a tall glass of orange juice, my morning could not get any better.

Baked Parmesan Tomatoes

Here's a great way to use up those delicious tomatoes that you may have in your garden. These are quick, easy and could be used as a side dish or a healthy afternoon snack.

Apple Yogurt Cake

I've been dying for our apples to ripen and be ready for some major apple baking/cooking/eating action. I jumped the gun a little with these ones, since I think they weren't quite as ready as they could've been, but oh, they still tasted so, so delicious in this amazing cake I baked yesterday.

Bobby Flay's Grilled Flat Bread

I discovered this amazing recipe this past summer at a friend's bbq. I was immediately addicted, and now anytime we fire up the grill I am sure to have this dough ready to go. The topping choices are limitless and it's fun to experiment with new flavors.

Applesauce

Fall, my very favorite time of year, is almost here! Many of my all-time favorite recipes are fall related, and this applesauce is one of them. It's really easy to make, crazy delicious and makes your kitchen smell divine.

Fluffy Whole Wheat Pancakes

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• I've never been a huge fan of pancakes, usually preferring crepes over them anyday. But when we dropped by D's brother's place last week and these pancakes were served I was delightfully surprised how fluffy and delicious they were. 

Stuffed Strawberries

My friend Corinne came over this last Saturday. I hadn't seen her forever, and we had a lot to talk about. But talking is much more fun when you can be making, and eating, something delicious at the same time and Corinne was so nice to bring over ingredients for these cream cheese stuffed strawberries.

Understandably Corinne did most of the talking since I had my mouth full of these delicious little treats.

Creamy Chicken Taquitos

If there is one food that has been on our menu plan weekly for the past month, it is these delectable taquitos. I've always like taquitos; they're yummy, crispy and so portable. I tend to like anything that I can hold in my hand and eat without touching a utensil. But I usually don't like to buy ready-made taquitos. I have issues with other people (or even worse, some machine in a factory) preparing my meat. Not that it wouldn't be tasty but I like to know exactly what kind of meat I'm putting in my mouth.

Yes, I have control issues, but I hate gnawing on fatty meat pieces. I like to be in charge, especially when it comes to my food.

Strawberry Coffee Cake

...or raspberry, or maybe even blueberry coffee cake. In my case it was all three, a very berry coffee cake that stole my heart one Monday night.

Peppermint Patties

I'm wordless. Mainly because my mouth is, yet again, full of something that came out of my kitchen.

I've always been a fan of mint chocolate candy. My mother is partly to blame for this. While I was growing up in Finland she would buy After Eights for any occasion that was even slightly of any importance.

Orange Sweet Rolls

I've been dreaming of orange sweet rolls just about every week now. There's a bakery close to us called Shirley's, and they have amazing sweet rolls in variety of flavors: Cinnamon, orange, raspberry...

Yum.

Chocolate Chocolate Chip Amish Friendship Bread

I received an Amish Friendship Bread started from a friend of mine. I hadn't made any for about a year and I wasn't quite sure what I was going to do with it. I decided to mush it and feed it, as instructed, and once it was done and ready to be used I didn't feel like making any. So what do you do in that situation? You put it in the fridge, of course! Sure, the so-called instructions tell you NOT to put it in the fridge. It also states that 'only the Amish know how to create the "starter"'.

Yeah, right. That's why there are recipes for the starter on every single self-respecting recipe site.

They've cracked the Amish bread starter code!

Guacamole

These are a few of my favorite green things.

Limes, cilantro, avocados...

I really love basil too, but that is a story, and a recipe, for another time.

Laskiaispulla - Shrove Tuesday Pastry

Today is Shrove Tuesday. Or Fat Tuesday, if you'd like to call it that.

I like fat. It makes things taste good.

Orange Cranberry White Chocolate Chip Cookies

• I have no picture of these cookies to show you.
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• The reason being I ate them all before I had the decency to take out my camera and have some proof that these existed.
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• Now the proof is on my waist and I am working on eliminating it.
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• I originally started making milk chocolate chip cookies but decided I didn't really want any. Of course I made some though, D wouldn't be happy with me if I changed my plans completely. So I divided the dough in half before adding the milk chocolate chips and used the other half of chipless dough to make these cranberry cookies. I just added the orange zest, white chocolate chips and dried cranberries until the mixture looked about right.
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• And now, I really don't have any need for the regular chocolate chip cookies. 
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• The following recipe makes the full amount of cranberry cookies. You can do what I did and just divide it in half after making the basic dough or half it before you even begin.
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• Orange Cranberry White Chocolate Chip Cookies (original from allrecipes.com)
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• 1 cup butter, softened
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• zest of one large orange
• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 teaspoons hot water
• 1 to 2 cups dried cranberries
• 1 to 2 cups white chocolate chips
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• 1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
• 2. Cream together the butter, white sugar, and brown sugar until smooth. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then stir in the vanilla and orange zest. Dissolve baking soda in hot water. Add to batter along with salt. Stir in flour, cranberries, and white chocolate chips. Drop by large spoonfuls onto ungreased pans.
• 3. Bake for about 10-12 minutes in the preheated oven, or until edges are nicely browned.

Martha's Marble Cake

Nowadays I spend quite a bit of time on marthastewart.com just browsing recipes, planning different crafts and reading blogs. I find many new recipes that I want to try and this marble cake is one that I just had to make.

Lemon Bread

I found this recipe in a cookbook we received as a wedding present years ago. The book is called New Dieter's Cookbook by Better Homes and Gardens. My roommate got it for us, and no, she wasn't hinting anything.

English Muffin Bread

This recipe changed my life! For awhile now I've been looking for a recipe for bread that D would like to toast for breakfast. Up until now all the recipes have been just ok, but this one he absolutely loves! 

The life changing part is that I don't have to buy bread from the store anymore. This one is for toasting, snacking etc. and the French bread is for making sandwiches and garlic toast, and for soup dipping. That pretty much covers all our needs. 

Sprinkles Strawberry Cupcakes

Somehow I stumbled on this recipe. I don't remember how or why, but boy am I glad I did. If you haven't heard of Sprinkles Cupcakes before, you need to click on that link. They look so classy and divine, nothing like the ones I whipped up. 

But they were Tasty, with a capital T. 

Suklaa Kola

During the holidays I like to cook and bake foods that remind me of my childhood Christmases in Finland. One of those recipes is for Suklaa Kola (Chocolate caramels). When I was little my sisters would make these and set the pan on the snowy steps of our back porch. I would sit and stare through the glass door at the sugary goodness, hoping this would help it cool faster.

Banana Cream Pie

Here's another way I use my small quiche pans: They are perfect for making small banana cream pies! I used a new recipe for the shortbread crust, and my all time favorite recipe for the filling, which my brother introduced our family to over ten years ago.

A long time ago, after my very first break-up, I doubled this recipe and made it in a huge casserole dish. Then I ate half of it in one sitting. It made me feel good inside. Really, really good.